Aletes (
Ancient Greek: Ἀλήτης) was a son of
Hippotes, of
Dorian ancestry, and a fifth-generation descendant of
Heracles.[1] He is said to have defeated in battle the Corinthians, taken possession of
Corinth, and to have expelled the
Sisyphids[2] thirty years after the first invasion of the
Peloponnesus by the
Heraclids. His family, sometimes called the Aletidae, maintained themselves at Corinth down to the time of
Bacchis (that is, late 10th century BC).[3]Velleius Paterculus calls him a descendant of Heracles, but of the sixth generation.[4] He received an
oracle, promising him the sovereignty of
Athens if during the war, which was then going on, its king should remain uninjured. This oracle became known at Athens, and the Athenian king
Codrus sacrificed himself to preserve the city.[5]
Callimachus, Callimachus and Lycophron with an English translation by A. W. Mair ; Aratus, with an English translation by G. R. Mair, London: W. Heinemann, New York: G. P. Putnam 1921. Internet Archive
Conon, Fifty Narrations, surviving as one-paragraph summaries in the Bibliotheca (Library) of Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople translated from the Greek by Brady Kiesling.
Online version at the Topos Text Project.
Pindar, The Odes of Pindar including the Principal Fragments with an Introduction and an English Translation by Sir John Sandys, Litt.D., FBA. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1937.
Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.